Creativity is great, but plagiarism is faster

(Shawn Feeny, Mr. Tambourine Man)


"Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target, as far as which others cannot even see."
-Arthur Schopenhauer

In the article I was reading, this quote was cited. Logically enough, the writer asks the question, then how does anyone know if the genius hits the target? Something like this was cooking in my head after reading the quote, but I couldn't put it into plain language. Frustrated with my inability to express myself, I decided the quote itself had missed the target. Next, I wondered how I could be sure, since the target was out of my sight. Realizing I was quickly distancing myself from both genius and talent, I stopped to consider it differently.

Here is a reinvisioning: Talent is taking the concept of an idea and creating an intelligent--albeit unoriginal--variation; genius is taking the original idea, stripping it of its variations, and deconceptualizing it until only the idea remains.

That is among the most convoluted sentences I've ever bothered writing. I wouldn't have if I didn't firmly believe that genius isn't spinning people around until they're too dizzy to understand or care about an erudite theory. To me, true genius lies in the ability to arrive at complex knowledge, and be able to distill it into a simple, even practical, truth. This kind of genius counts for something. The kind of genius where only one person can have certain knowledge is a sad, lonely genius.